The Unexpected
by sweet little nightmare
Summary: Myrnin's last assistant before Claire did not meet the fate implied by Sam, Amelie, Michael and even Myrnin himself. No, Mallory Isles' story does not end in her death... but then how does it end? Why does she disappear?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Morganville Vampires series or any of its characters; Rachel Caine does. I do, however****, own my made up character Mallory Isles (well, unless there's someone out there who somehow invented the exact same character, in which case please don't sue!)**

**Summary: Some time before Claire came; Myrnin had another assistant, Mallory Isles. And Mallory Isles does not meet the same fate as her predecessors – so where does she go? And why? (I'm so bad at summaries!!)**

**A/N: I've only read up to book 3 so far, and that was a while ago, so if any of the details I mention in this story are wrong, I apologise in advance.**

One

Mallory stuffed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Her palms were sweaty. Which was weird, because Mallory Isles just wasn't the kind of girl who got nervous. Usually, anyway. She was jittery, too. She wanted to move around, but she didn't want to get any closer to the man – could she call him a man? – ok then, vampire, sitting behind the desk.

The man behind the desk had bright, dark eyes. They watched her with a curious, frank intensity. She would have guessed him to be maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years old, had she not known that in reality he must have been much older.

Amelie, standing slightly behind Mallory, broke the awkward, trembling silence with her usual crisp, lyrical tones.

"I have found you a new assistant, Myrnin."

Mallory could have sworn she saw the man behind the desk shudder convulsively, almost imperceptibly.

"No," he grumbled like a petulant child, "I told you, I don't want another assistant."

"No?" Amelie was unfazed. "I don't think you're in any position to contradict me. Look at yourself!" Mallory wondered what she meant. What was so extraordinary about him, other than the fact that he was one of the living dead? Sure, he looked rather eccentric, but...

"You do remember what–"

"I _remember._ Of course I remember." Amelie said brusquely. "But what does that change? Her name is Mallory. Be careful with her, won't you, Myrnin?"

Mallory, watching this exchange with a mixture of intrigue and alarm, bristled. Be careful with her? She wasn't some fragile little doll!

"You know I can't just-" Myrnin started, but Amelie cut in swiftly:

"Yes, yes. I know. But do try, won't you? I believe this time might be...better." Amelie stepped toward the door.

"Wait," Mallory started, "what's -?"

But Amelie was gone.

**

They stared at each other for a beat. Little more than a second. Mallory was trying to figure him out just by looking, but she knew he was doing the exact same thing to her, only probably far more effectively, and that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"I know about you," she blurted, "you're Myrnin. You're even older than Amelie, aren't you? And you're alone. Nobody ever comes here but her." The moment she'd begun to speak, she wished she hadn't. For some reason, she didn't think Myrnin would react particularly well to discovering that someone other than a select few vampires knew of his existence.

"How do you know about me?" He sounded taken aback. His voice was hoarse, and she couldn't quite make up her mind whether or not he was speaking sharply to her.

"I... I..." Mallory caught herself stuttering, and stopped abruptly. She hated stutterers. After a few moments, she composed herself and pressed on, "I saw you. Well, I dreamed you, actually. Only you were... well, different in the dream. I don't know why... Younger, maybe? But...I didn't think you existed. I thought it was just a random dream about Amelie and some creepy guy arguing in a..." having realised what she had just said, Mallory's voice trailed off. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean – Well, I – it's just –"

Myrnin offered her a wry smile. "I quite understand," he said, "creepy is... rather tame in comparison to the way I sometimes berate myself." He paused, casting an inquiring glance at her. "I am far more interested in this dream of yours than in whether or not you're afraid of me." His eyes were luminous, curious, eager.

Mallory shrugged irritably. "Well, what about it?"

"Well, I would like to know whether what you saw – if indeed it was a real event you were seeing – has already happened, or has yet to happen... What was it that I was arguing with Amelie about?"

Mallory hesitated before answering. She had the feeling she'd already said too much, and while she didn't feel any immediate threat from Myrnin – odd, given that he was a vampire – she would have had to be completely witless to trust him.

"I don't remember," she replied coolly, "it was a really short dream and, like I said, I didn't think anything of it at the time." As usual, the lie that slipped from her lips would have convinced almost anyone. Sometimes she was proud of it, and sometimes she wasn't, but there was no denying that she was an excellent liar.

Myrnin, however, was evidently not fooled. He fixed her with a piercing stare, so penetrating that Mallory's mask of bravado faltered visibly and she turned her face abruptly away from him to hide her alarm. She braced herself for his anger, but Myrnin only began rummaging through the copious amount of paper on his desk, and did not pursue the subject. After a few moments of awkward silence, he gave up the fruitless search for some unknown document and sat unnaturally still. He wasn't looking at Mallory at all now; his eyes were fixed firmly on the rough-grained wood of the desk. He was tense to the point of being frozen in his seat.

"Myrnin" began Mallory tentatively, "what's happening?"

His voice was louder and sharper than it had yet been, when he spoke again. "Get – out –" he seemed to have to force the words to come. "Get out – now."

Somehow, she didn't have to be told twice. She turned, and fled up the stairs. Not even Myrnin's agonised groan of mingled pain and fury made her turn and look back. She tumbled out of the musty dimness of his study with only a flooding sense of relief as the door shut behind her. That, she decided, had been just too weird.

In the darkness behind the closed door, Myrnin's thoughts tunnelled in until all he knew was the will-paralyzing rage and the all-consuming thirst for blood, and nothing else beyond that existed.

***********

A/N: So... what did you think? Concrit much appreciated! Do I continue this or not? Did I get anything wrong? Thanks in advance!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I own nothing except Mallory and friends. Amelie, Myrnin and co are strictly property of Rachel Caine, as is the series they come from.**

**A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter, especially the last part. Hope you like it!**

Two

Mallory had only the ten-minute walk to the house she shared with her friends Emma Pacey and Tierney Noble to mull over what had just happened. The moment she stepped inside, she was accosted by an extremely excited Emma, whose light-brown hair had been forced out of its natural curliness into a sleek updo, and who was wearing a dark blue dress that was most un-Emma-ish.

"Guess where I'm going tonight!" Emma commanded as Mallory kicked off her shoes and let the door slam shut behind her, "Guess who asked me to go out with them?"

"Um, that wouldn't be Connor, would it?" Mallory guessed without even having to think about it. Emma and Connor Lorne's 'Are-they? Aren't they?' thing was common knowledge among their circles of friends.

Emma positively beamed. "Finally!" she exclaimed, leading Mallory into the kitchen, "I've been waiting for you guys for ages so I could tell you, but Tierney's got a class and I had no idea where you were, so – Where were you, anyway?"

That was the last thing Mallory wanted to discuss, and so she bought a little time by quizzing Emma on the one subject she knew her friend wouldn't be able to resist talking about.

"So where is he taking you, anyway? It's not exactly like there's a whole heap of places to go in Morganville."

This was something that had apparently not occurred to Emma who, like Mallory, had not grown up in the town. "Uh...actually, I have no idea," she admitted, "I guess I'll find out in a few hours!"

Mallory sat back and listened to Emma babbling on about her date, and how Connor had finally decided to approach her and ask her out. She was obviously thrilled, and ordinarily, Mallory would have been eager for details, but today her thoughts were elsewhere. So the man from her dream was real... He really did exist... This, more than anything, filled her with unease. How was it that she had dreamt of Myrnin without ever having met him until today? She wasn't psychic, goddamn it! She wasn't even special! She was just ordinary Mallory Isles, a seventeen-year-old with a smart mouth and a yearning for knowledge that she hid behind a facade of teenage chirpiness in order to fit in. Did Amelie somehow know about the dream, without Mallory mentioning it to her? Was that why Amelie had singled her out? She couldn't think of any other reason.

"Mal, are you even listening to anything I'm saying?" Emma whined fake-irritably, "I just asked you the same question like, three times!"

"Oh," Mallory glanced up, startled, from her position at the kitchen table, "sorry. What?"

"I said, are you going to let me hook you up with one of Connor's friends or not? Aiden's ok, if you'd just –"

"Oh, Emma, no." Mallory sighed, "I am not going out with a guy I don't even know. The only thing we'll have in common is lack of a significant other. No way."

"Who peed in your coffee?" Emma, stung, folded her arms across her chest and regarded Mallory with a sullen glare, "you're miles away, and now you're yelling. All I did was make a little suggestion."

"Look, Em," Mallory backtracked, standing, "I'm just tired. That's all. I had a class this morning and I guess it kind of wore me out, and I was up till late last night anyway. I'm happy things are working out with you and Connor. Really. But now I'm just going to go to my room and crash. Seriously, me and no sleep are a bad combination. So I'll see you later, okay?"

"Sure," Emma replied resignedly, dropping into the chair that Mallory had just vacated, "whatever. I'll tell you about it later, yeah?"

Mallory injected as much enthusiasm as possible into her own agreement of "Yeah, sure," before heading upstairs to her room where – in reality, not the slightest bit tired – her thoughts spun crazily in her head, chasing each other for hours into the night without resolution.

***

When Myrnin came to his senses, he was sprawled on the littered floor, half-sitting, half-lying against the stone wall. The last hour was a blur in his previously perfect memory. His first thought was: _Did I hurt her? Did I kill her?_ The fact that he couldn't remember horrified him perhaps more than anything else.

His throat was dry and still smarting from the thirst. There had been no blood today. Did that mean the girl was alive? Myrnin raised his head a fraction from where it rested against the cold stone. His eyes, now reverted to their usual warm brown tone, scanned the room in a fraction of a second. There was no broken body, crushed beneath a fallen cabinet or lying among shards of shattered glass. That was good, yes?

There had been a time – so long ago that he could barely remember it – when he'd been naive enough to believe that vampires couldn't really feel pain. Now he cursed himself for such stupidity. Because now he felt it searing through him; white hot agony, bone-deep. Like being burned from the inside. There would be several minutes more of this, he knew, and he didn't trust himself to move more than an inch at a time. This was his punishment, he felt. His punishment for such terrible loss of control, such brutal violence that – though natural for many of his kind – he had always abhorred.

"Myrnin," Amelie stepped with sudden fluidity out of the portal doorway. Her voice, though soft, screamed through his mind so that his muscles twitched a feeble, involuntary protest. Concern pooled in her eyes – such an unnatural emotion, coming from her – as she moved across the room toward him with effortless grace. She stopped at a respectable distance, watching him carefully.

"It's worse," he told her as soon as the pain had receded enough that he could talk, "it was so sudden I... barely felt it coming. Did I hurt her? The girl you sent?"

"No," Amelie assured him calmly, "you didn't. You even warned her to leave before you lost control completely. Impressive, I must say, and not a feat you've ever managed before. And yet you say – and it is obvious from looking at you – that the disease is worsening."

"Yes," agreed Myrnin, "no doubt about it. But Amelie, that isn't the worst of it."

Amelie's face was unusually grave. And that, more than anything, belied the seriousness of the situation.

"Go on," she prompted him curtly.

Myrnin staggered to his feet, giving himself time to think about how best to phrase what he was about to say. "She knew who I was," he started, "she'd seen me in a dream, arguing with you, before she'd ever met me. She _knows_ things, and her knowledge... no, it's more than that. It's power. Not the same as yours or mine. Not like anything I've ever seen before, but power nonetheless. It could be enough to sustain me – to give us more time."

Amelie's face was like marble. Utterly unreadable. "What are you saying?" This time, her voice told him nothing.

"I'm saying that she may know enough to be able to help us," he paused, a wicked spark of bitter hope rising in his eyes, "and I'm saying that if not, then she may prove... useful to me nonetheless."

***

**A/N: Duh-duh-duh!!! Was that... maybe... a decent cliff-hanger? Coming from me??? Wow. By the way, the point of this A/N was actually to say that I know Myrnin's reaction to the disease (whatever it may be) is worse in this than in the books, but there are reasons for that, and they will make themselves apparent as the story goes on, so I am not merely over-dramatising his plight. Just so you know...**


End file.
